Back when Dean Koontz had a podcast he talked a little about his writing process. He said he writes 8 hours a day and works on one page at a time. He writes the page, then goes word by word, line by line until that page is perfect. Then he goes to the next page. I can’t remember if he starts with a detailed outline, or just goes with it, but since his books are suspenseful I would think he would need to know who the bad guy is and what they are doing before starting. Maybe not.
I know I couldn’t do that, but it opened my eyes to all the different methods that exist. I know there have been books written one text message at a time. I heard an interview once with Connie Willis, a science fiction author, who said she started writing while waiting for her children at the orthodontist. She worked in 15 minute segments for years. Put in that perspective, an hour a day is a luxury writing period. On the other extreme, I heard an interview with fantasy writer Laurel Hamilton who said she writes 8 hours a day, but thinks she hits her stride after 5 hours. Five hours!
It is probably because I do my hour of writing at the end of the day when my children are asleep, but at the end of that hour I’m tired. My brain is tired. Maybe because I’m concentrating my effort into one hour a day, but I average 1,000 words during that hour. Most of it will probably be cut later. I don’t think I could sustain that effort over time even if I did have the chance to write 8 hours a day every day. How do these folks do it? Are creative activities like other types of jobs where you’re expected the focus the majority of every working day?
I think it’s an easy misconception that because something is creative it must be fun. Intellectually I know that the benefit of hard work often is fun … it just doesn’t always feel like it at the time. In my hour between 9pm and 10pm (when I usually write) it is easy to distract myself with thoughts of other writing methods. Maybe I’m going about this all wrong. And yet I’m finding slowly that keeping this one habit is improving other good habits in my life. My house is a little bit cleaner and the family is eating a little bit healthier. So even if I’m doing it wrong I’m going to stick with it.
But there’s no way I could write one perfect page after another.
HourADayWriter 